Reflections on a Diplomatic Career in the Middle East: A Conversation With Ambassador Yael Lempert
Brian is joined by Amb. (ret.) Yael Lempert, Vice President for Outreach at MEI, to discuss her career in diplomacy and the importance of US diplomatic efforts abroad. She shares stories from postings across the Middle East in Baghdad, Cairo, Tripoli, Jerusalem, and Amman and examines how her personal and professional experiences shaped her approach to the work. Together, Brian and Yael discuss the realities of life in the Foreign Service, the core tenets of American diplomacy, and why it matters in today’s Middle East.
This report considers the lack of Palestinian political agency as a driver of regional insecurity that must be resolved before wider conflicts can be settled. The author analyses the conditions that contributed to the destruction of Palestinian political capacity, including Israeli policies, Palestinian shortcomings, and exploitation by Iran, and makes recommendations for an Arab strategic initiative.
Trump’s Family Business Deals Risk Further Undermining the Credibility of US Middle East Policy
President Trump’s family businesses are once again in the spotlight as a new financial disclosure showed they earned $2 billion in income in 2025 — a dramatic increase on the year before, with much of it coming from Gulf entities, raising emoluments concerns. Mounting perceptions of corruption, combined with unresolved crises in Iran and Israel-Palestine, are eroding trust among key partners in the Middle East. With the 2026 midterms approaching, these entanglements could represent a major political vulnerability and further undermine America’s already-strained standing in the region.
The 4.8 million residents of the occupied Palestinian territories live in two simultaneous and vastly different realities. In the physical world, Palestinians are captives, crammed into Gaza or West Bank enclaves and blockaded by Israeli military checkpoints. But on the internet, the checkpoints disappear.
الجدل المستمر (والمبالغ فيه إلى حد كبير) حول قرار أعضاء الكونغرس التقدميين بإعاقة إدراج مليار دولار في التمويل الإضافي لنظام الدفاع الصاروخي الإسرائيلي المسمى بالقبة الحديدية، إلى جانب الـ 3.8 مليار دولار من المساعدات العسكرية الأمريكية التي تتلقاها إسرائيل بالفعل، كشف عن تصدعات في داخل الحزب الديمقراطي وكذلك عن مدى إمكانية إجراء نقاش حقيقي حول القضايا المتعلقة بإسرائيل/فلسطين في واشنطن.
While much of the discourse surrounding the Iron Dome controversy is mired in hysterics and hyperbole, some have put forward a more rational case for providing additional funding for it. One of the standard arguments advanced in recent days is that Iron Dome is crucial not only for saving Israeli lives but is equally important (perhaps even more so) for saving Palestinian lives. This claim has been echoed by numerous American and Israeli analysts and even Members of Congress, and seems to have been accepted by a number of journalists as well. But is it actually true?
The legacy of 9/11 in the Middle East Peace Process
As we mark 20 years since the 9/11 terror attacks and the subsequent U.S. interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other protracted elements of the ill-fated and ill-conceived “war on terror,” it is easy to overlook other disastrous legacies of U.S. policy in the post-9/11 era. This is particularly true in the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where Washington’s response to 9/11 effectively marked the beginning of the long, tortured death of the Middle East Peace Process, and with it hopes for a two-state solution.
After 18 years, Palestinian families can finally live together: The end of Israel’s 2003 citizenship law
The expiration of Israel’s 2003 citizenship law early last month has finally ended the suffering of roughly 30,000 Palestinian families and paved the way for their reunification. Despite the efforts of the Zionist political parties to renew the law, the abstention from voting of the two Arab Palestinian Knesset members from the United Arab List — which, for the first time, is represented in Israel’s new coalition government — blocked the majority needed to extend the long-standing “temporary” law, which subsequently expired on July 6. While this is welcome news for many Palestinian families, the defeat of this notorious law is by no means a panacea. Until there is real change in Israel, Palestinians, both those who are citizens of Israel as well as those in the occupied territories, will continue to face legal obstacles when it comes to obtaining their basic rights.
It would be an understatement to say that the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research in Germany has written the book on how to analyze textbooks. The Institute has actually published many books — ones that are meticulous, detailed, and dispassionate. Now the Institute has published one more, this time on Palestinian textbooks.
The “Palestinian exception”: Social media censorship of Palestinian activism
In a landscape of suppression and retaliation against Palestinian journalists and activists at the hands of Israel, social media networks have been at once critical organizing platforms and tools for exacerbating censorship.
The Trilemma of Power, Aid, and Peacebuilding in the Israeli-Palestinian Context
On Dec. 21, 2020, the United States Congress passed the Nita M. Lowey Middle East Partnership for Peace Act. The new law provides $250 million over five years to expand peace and reconciliation programs between Israelis and Palestinians as well as to support projects bolstering the Palestinian economy. But such programs are unlikely to be effective because the whole approach on which they are based is structurally flawed in two critical ways: first, because it is disconnected from local political, social, cultural, and economic processes and expectations; and second, because it tends to reinforce the inequalities that sustain the conflict between the two sides while undermining the declared goals of this intervention.
